


Strange New Things

by Semianonymity



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-02
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-31 23:52:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semianonymity/pseuds/Semianonymity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the end. For once, everything is going to be okay.</p><p>Earth has been remade, and the trolls integrated, which had happened mostly on accident. It’s hard. It all turned out for the best. Those are mutual truths. With a new future in a world of uneasy coexistence between humans and trolls, a world where all sixteen of them go to school and play in the park and patch up the pieces and navigate a new world, they do have each other. It will all work out.</p><p>Chapter Three: Jade and Gamzee have a conversation, and go to a beach, of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Strange New Things

**Author's Note:**

> This is the set-up for a series of semi-standalone fics, with each one having an independent storyline, but all of them taking place in the same universe. Stories that will probably appear: Tavros volunteering at the zoo and/or animal shelter; a number of stories involving anti-troll prejudice by humans, human-bashing (no longer a legal sport but just barely) by trolls; Gamzee baking cake with Dad; sports with the terminally incompetent; everyone else is introduced to the fun of trying to hide Karkat's blood color in every-day life.
> 
> In this chapter, there are references to (largely accidental) self-harm.

John wakes up in his own bed. Mid-afternoon sunshine is streaming onto his face, clear and golden and bright enough to make him blink as he sits up, everything in his head swimming around, as impossible to pin down as fish, as reality—the one they must have remade, half-accidentally and with all of them that remained one stray thought away from a complete breakdown—reasserts itself, settling with almost tangible weight into the space behind his eyes.

His room was pristine. Well, as pristine as it ever got.

There's a note on the door from his dad, when he shuffles his way across the floor and manages to fumble it open. " _Out shopping, there's a cake on the counter if you're hungry, see you soon, son_." It's signed with love, and he weeps near-silently for ten minutes straight, tears streaming helplessly down his face, curled into a fetal position half in his room and half in the hall, sprawled across the doorway.

Since he can't bring himself to actually look out the windows, afraid of what he'll see, he jams shoes onto his feet, clumsily, and scrubs at his face with his shirt, and steels himself—he is made of mangrit, he can _do_ this—and pushes the door open onto suburban afternoon.

Across the street the sprinkler has been left running too long and soggy puddles are forming on the grass. People are out in their yards, drinking in the sun like a benediction, standing too close and touching each other too often. None of the children are running through the sprinklers. He doesn't think any of them really remember, but maybe being unmade and then—barely—remade sort of messes you up. He's feeling really shaky, just standing there in the street, but he also knows (as much as anyone knows, he thinks) what happened.

Four houses down and across the street, just standing there, is a troll. That registers in John's mind first as something—someone—alien, familiar but not in the context of the sun-soaked quiet street he'd grown up on. His next feeling is driven by even stronger familiarity as he squints through his glasses, already jogging down the street, before something clicks into place and makes his breath freeze in his chest.

"Karkat!" he half-yells, an exclamation and—because he can't trust it yet—a question. It's too loud in the hushed street, and some of the neighbors are already glaring at Karkat suspiciously. Not in a oh crap-an-alien way, but how they'd glare at a traveling salesman looking over a house too carefully, or a dangerous-looking teenager (maybe they have a point, even though he mostly just looks grumpy and a little confused) who hasn't done anything illegal, _yet_ —barely tolerated. They're a little afraid.

Karkat seems to turn even before he really registers the words, eyes widening a little, and his eyes look completely different in the yellow afternoon, the gray skin and black clothes and hunched posture, too, as half-unbelieving as John even if it had to be even worse for him, even weirder, he had only ever seen this place through his window into John's life—and it turns out John can still do the windy thing. Everything blurs as he hits Karkat, wrapping him up into a hug and squeezing him almost as hard as he's squeezed back, both of them babbling and crying, John's hands restlessly moving over Karkat, patting him to reassure himself—and to check—that he's okay, Karkat's here, they're both here and it's going to be okay.

You could probably light up the world with the force of his grin. For once, Karkat is smiling helplessly back, all charcoal-smudge skin and tired eyes, sharp white teeth bared in the kind of elated high that only comes from not only saving your own ass from certain death but also—John can imagine Karkat saying it—a whole fucking world, even if it's full of humans.

"Is everything okay, John?" a soccer mom twitters, all hand-wringing concern that seems totally out of proportion for the situation, in two different directions. Because of _course_ John's fine, but can't she see the _alien_ he's kind of—

Uh. Well. Straddling and hugging in the middle of the street, from where he knocked into him. So John flushes and scrambles upright and pulls Karkat up after him with only the slightest prick of claws—they're getting better at that, there's not even any blood this time!—and hurries him down the street and into his house.

"Fuck," Karkat whispers fervently, as they step into the dim interior hallway, door closing behind them. His voice is a little broken. John gets it.

"I think there are trolls on Earth," John blurts out, because none of the neighbors seem wild about Karkat, but they don't like him in a normal way, a familiar way—it's not just that he's an alien. John thinks. Or maybe they remade everything wrong. Karkat swallows nervously. The silence echoes.

Then Karkat shakes his head, almost audibly readjusts his thoughts, and scowls in such a way that it's clear he's ecstatic. John is almost unbearably fond of him for a moment—of the whole world, too, of all the friends he hasn't lost, his _dad_ , his heart exults—he knows there will be messages on Pesterchum, waiting for him.

"I already hate your stupid fucking human sun," Karkat snarls, not meaning it at all. John can't believe that the troll teeth used to freak him out a little—not that he'd ever admit it. "I thought I was going to end up fucking blind as Terezi and then I'd need to find someone to take me out of my unceasing misery before I started licking things or, or—"

"I forgot," John says, his own sundazzled eyes adjusting to the comparatively dim indoors. "You guys are nocturnal. Like bats I guess?" And then he laughs for five minutes straight, until he's curled up on the floor gasping and Karkat is sounding a little frantic.

"—fuck! Stupid fucking human—John. JOHN. Stop writhing around like a grub!"

He's hysterical again, but John figures that's okay. It's happy this time, not like trying to save the world and knowing you're gonna fuck up, but not absolutely positively and you need to do it anyway and everyone is dying or dead or about to die, including yourself, which is still the least of your problems.

The doorbell rings, and John jerks upright, making Karkat swear some more. They'd ended up huddling together on the floor, apparently it's going to be a Thing this afternoon, crying on the floor. Karkat is slumped against him, his hands clasped in John's in a way that could be taken as distinctly gay but it's mostly to anchor them both, and also because John's hands shake uncontrollably without something to grip right now.

So Karkat ends up coming up along with John as he wrenches the door open, for a moment heart leaping up, half-expecting his dad, but Dad ran out of doorbell-ringing jokes and tricks a while ago so there's no reason for him—

Dave is standing on the porch and Rose and Kanaya and a troll—Nepeta, she was dead, and Sollux—and they're all pale-faced (well, not the trolls!, John thinks) and tear-stained, even Dave, and radiant, and somehow it all ends up in a—six? Seven-way—hug that sort of staggers into a wall, then dissolves, then re-coalesces on the ground. At some point someone pushes the door mostly closed with a foot. It's way too crowded, but they make it work, John wedging his way into the coat closet, which is a little musty and also lumpy because he's sitting on one of his dad's shoes. It's glorious, and dusty. No one talks at first, then everyone talks.

"I think I have a hive here," John catches Sollux blurting at some point. Kanaya nods. They look unnerved—John understands. He's starting to remember things he never learned, like how far away he is from the troll side of town, and where Jade and Dave and Rose live--in the same city, or just outside it.

"Are we in fucking _Iowa_? Do we seriously live in the Midwest now? Fuck this new world," Dave says, looking just a little pissed despite his best efforts, and it sounds like Rose is about to try the hysterical-laughing-breakdown on for size, but then the door—good thing it hadn't been closed completely—is pushed open with a bang, making Karkat yelp and Sollux dive out of the way towards John, pushing him into the jackets and coats. It's a reaction that has Rose murmuring about post-traumatic stress after she compulsively reaches for her weapon.

The door opens to reveal another troll—Equius—and Jade, both looking like (no more laughing today, he doesn't want the hysteria to come back) spooked horses and standing a little too close. Jade gapes, almost disbelieving, then bursts into tears. A second later, Equius follows her. He manages to dribble blue snot all over Nepeta as she wraps herself around him, and they're pulled inside, too.

There is officially no more room in the entryway. Like normal, Karkat is thinking right along with John, who is beaming again. “This is fucking stupid,” Karkat announces. “There's no room here. I am finding incredibly deeps wells of hate, producing limitless quantities of hatewater, for any situation where I'm sitting between this _stupid_ human—” Dave smirks as he mentioned, except it's more a smile, he's still too relieved and happy and disbelieving “—and the biggest pervert of a troll ever spawned, a waste of every iota—”

The rant continues. Everyone probably agrees—there are elbows getting in the way, everyone's too close—but nobody moves until the doorbell rings again anyway. The uncomfortable closeness is too perfect to break.

\-------------

When John's dad comes home, he finds a gray-skinned boy—a troll, but still so young—sitting on his front porch, arms wrapped around himself and his own claws digging into his flesh until his arms are dripping purple-blue blood. He is apparently in the grip of some sort of inner struggle, or (and?) about to have a panic attack. Mostly he's staring at the door, with a certain element to his expression that implies he doesn't know what to do with it, but the better part of him suggesting terror.

“Can I help you, son?” Mr. Egbert asks.

“Motherfuck,” the troll says in response, like it's a reflex. “Uh. I'm Gamzee.” He gives his name tentatively, like he's not sure if it should mean anything or not.

He sighs, and shifts the bag of groceries he's holding a little bit. “You better come in,” Mr. Egbert says, and shepherds the boy inside.

He finds nine trolls and four humans crowded into his kitchen, yelling and arguing and smiling helplessly at each other and also the whole world. His son is grudgingly serving cake, which two of the humans—he's pretty sure he can guess who—are teasing him mercilessly about. Some of the trolls seem to be catching on. He notices that troll teeth are not exactly made for chewing cake. They're giving it their best effort anyway.

With all the noise and hubbub and teasing, it's still just a split second before everyone in the room is focused on him. They're certainly not inattentive, but they're all young—around the same age as John, he thinks vaguely, not that's he's got any reason to assume that guess is accurate for the trolls, he's not sure how you tell, with them. Somehow they all seem too old, anyway—it's part mangrit, part experience, and a lot of it unmitigated terror.

It's dead silent. “Fuck,” one of them whispers, and the sharp tooth that Gamzee's been worrying at his thin black lips with slices cleanly through the flesh of the shaggy-haired boy. Blood begins to spill down his chin. Half of the room startles when, suddenly, one of the trolls slams his chair back, almost cowering, definitely whimpering. Trying to get as far away as possible, and make himself as small a target as possible.

They're all terrified, their expressions matched by the terror—and then anguish, then all-consuming rage, then something unidentifiable—on the face of the troll he'd brought in. Gamzee. Who is turning to run, so Mr. Egbert grabs at him on instinct, catching his shoulder. It's thoughtless, he realizes a second too late, as claws dig into his arm. He has a sudden impression that this child could—would—rip off his arm and beat him to death with it. But it's gone suddenly, along with the hand, the claws already stained with his blood from where they'd punched through his jacket, shirt and skin ending up even more spattered. As Gamzee pulls out his claws they end up tearing Mr. Egbert open even further, red dripping onto the floor as the troll shakes his head—no, no, _no_ —and backs away. He can't run from himself, though, and he holds the red-stained tips of his fingers held away from him, like he wishes the whole hand wasn't attached.

Gamzee only reaches a handful of inches further up his chest than John does, looks just as young as his son and is worryingly strong. Nobody in the room even comes up to his collar bone. They're all so young. The troll is maybe tall for his age and still promising a growth spurt to come, but he's still short, and probably a murderer, he realizes.

There is another quick flurry of panic-stricken movement. Dave—yes, those glasses, John had been so thrilled—has drawn a sword. And his own son is suddenly in front of him: protecting him, he realizes. He knows in his bones that John can, despite the fine tremors running through his tensed shoulders.

Tears—purple-blue as well, but still recognizably what they are—are running down the troll's face now, like he's not even aware of it, so Mr. Egbert steps around his son and goes to pat him on the back.

Ten seconds later his jacket is even more ruined—the bloodied claws are still pushed away from them both, held apart like a talisman, but the other hand has fisted into the wool, claws (and now he knows just how sharp they are) tearing strips out of it. He wonders, vaguely, if troll tears wash out or if they'll stain, something he's never considered before, although now his shirt is turning periwinkle. He's pretty sure he keeps on remembering new things, a lot of it having to do with the trolls, but none of it at all addresses laundry.

Then John starts sniffling, and a voice he doesn't recognize says “Gamzee,” half hopeful and half loathing, and the floodgates holding back the noise are parted again.

At some point, Mr. Egbert is pretty sure he gets called a lusus. He wonders if this is better or worse than “John's dad,” and then he's relieved, because there are twelve—thirteen—people here who are John's friends, here to call him John's dad, or sir, or lusus—whatever that means—or the most irreverent “Mr. Egbert” he's ever heard, from Dave. That is ten more people than it used to be (he thinks he remembers), since he has high hopes for Gamzee, being interrogated in the corner; his dad instincts have activated, and this is the first time in a lot of years that John's had friends over: at all, part of his brain says; except for Dave and Rose and Jade, another part insists. He knows that they've been there for John for years, playing together in the yard and at the park and up and down the stairs, but he also knows he knows that they used to live very far away indeed, and he's never seen them before.

Then someone knocks on the door again—another two trolls, one clearly hesitant of his welcome, both of whom he's surprised to realize he recognizes as sea dwellers, which makes him realize that maybe he shouldn't know about the trolls at all, but that doesn't make sense; they let themselves in before anyone can make it over, and then it all dissolves into chaos again, the girl dragging the boy after her. There's a moment when someone growls, when the boy sea-troll's eyes go misty purple and he clenches his hands into fists, before he's absorbed into the clutter of children filling up the kitchen.

He ends up making macaroni and cheese for dinner, the cheap kind from a box because there are sixteen teenagers in his house and he's unprepared to feed them. A few of the trolls complain, since apparently the orange is off-putting even though none of them have ever tried it before, then there's an argument about the complaining, and they all fall on it like they're ravenous. He starts making a second batch before the first plates are cleared.

That night they all collapse in the den, like a two-species pile of puppies. The next day they'll all go home, but for now it's all black hair—and blonde; Dave and Rose stand out—and gray skin, and brown skin faded to gray tones as well by the darkness, the rise and fall of breath.

With everything silent, Mr. Egbert—John's Dad—goes outside and stares up at totally alien stars. They're completely new, not even something he's seeing again for the first time, nothing he's remembering, nothing he unremembered—just new. And he wonders about the sixteen kids sprawled in his living room, three-fourths of them breathing in a noticeably alien rhythm—and they'd all adjusted for horns as well—and he worries, for a moment, about interspecies politics, the antitroll movement, the discourse of mistrust rampant on both sides of the fence.

Then he does the dishes instead. No use worrying.

Anyway. Something about the kids tells him they could change the world if they put their mind to it.

-End-


	2. Bloody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karkat accidentally injures himself and starts bleeding in public; Dave punches John in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost, huge huge thanks to Dommywells for betaing! He's beyond awesome, and also saves me from my grammar. Additional thanks to Ezekiel and sammneiland for tense-related input!
> 
> Warnings in this chapter for blood.
> 
> Next chapter: probably Dad and Gamzee?

It's just a little cut, something Dave ignores entirely—little cuts happened all the time if you're messing around with swords, even shitty ones, no big deal—and John frowns at. But it can't be bothering Karkat, it can't even be something he's really noticed, because Karkat isn't swearing or complaining or carrying on.

Trolls are all _drama drama drama_ sometimes!

And Dave and John are used to looking at bright, bright red blood, even when it's hard to ignore against cool gray skin in the summer heat.

Dave keeps walking, steps regular in a way that says he has some thread of music running through his head, and John hurries after him and it takes John a few moments to realize that Karkat isn't following after them. When John turns around, tugging on Dave's sleeve so he turns as well, just a little irritated—visibly so, if you know what to look for, and John _practiced_ getting Dave to look annoyed—until his eyes fall on Karkat and Karkat looks so angry-blank that it has to be fear, and it's almost worst because they've all been so _happy_ , but at the same time, at least it's not expected, John thinks, terrible things had just been the default a few months and a lifetime and a universe ago—

Something's wrong, and adrenaline hits John, something clenches tight inside his chest, because Karkat looks— Karkat is looking at the blood in his hands with horror and disgust and there's a little cluster of adult trolls coming their way—either highbloods with no fear or lowbloods who don't dislike humans as much as they dislike the hemospectrum, something in his brain says, some part of his mind he's never used before, memories he shouldn't have—and Karkat has just bit his lip, blood darkened but not _enough_ as it smears over black lips, going pink against bright white teeth—

Something clicks in John's mind. “Karkat,” he says, but then changes his mind, turns to Dave, and he catches something in Karkat's face pulling tight and desperate as he does. “Dave, I need you to punch me in the face now,” he says, hoping he looks serious enough—this is a really fucking serious situation!

“Get out of here,” Karkat rasps, sounding too _old_ again, too old for his age and all full of the kinds of emotions that leave John feeling sick and nauseous. Both the humans ignore him, because there's no _time_ to tell him how stupid he's being. Unless Dave pulls some shenanigans, but he doesn't like to do that very much anymore. Life is easier with the most powerful of their gifts left by the wayside.

“What the hell,” Dave says, and then gets it. John can see him understand.

“ _Hard_ ,” John tells him, and Karkat makes a noise of protest but Dave has just punched John in the face. There is blood _everywhere_ , John thinks, and it's a good thing that it kind of hurts (he is so used to pain, it's almost familiar after all these calm, sunshine-filled days where no one has hurt him or killed him or tried to kill him, at least seriously, all those days when he hasn't killed anything at all, with a hammer or otherwise) because the pain keeps him from grinning like an idiot because his blood is so red. Unnaturally red, if you're a troll.

It's pretty easy to stagger into Karkat. John is always looking for reasons to invade his personal space anyway! Although they are usually nicer excuses than this.

Dave is vibrating with tension and has his hand poised to draw a sword, to defend them both, but that is a _really bad idea_ , John thinks. They are just normal kids—and a normal troll—and they have not saved the world or anything and everything's normal here, just move on, just _move on_ , he thinks, gritting his teeth.

“Oh fuck! I'm so sorry!” John yelps, trying to look like he's pulling back in fear and just too clumsy to do it, because he is still smearing blood on Karkat. It's left black-red wet patches on his shirt, and it's all over John's face and chin, and dripped onto his friendleader buddypal and Karkat's _hands_ are still red with his own blood, fuck, fuck _everything_ , the adult trolls are changing direction and oh crap humans and trolls really aren't supposed to be friends like this—

“Karkat, I need you to attack me,” John says, low and desperate and he's really worried because Karkat's face is blank with something like horror and fear and also confusion, John's not really sure if he's listening or not. “Karkat, come on, scratch me or punch me—please don't hit my nose again! Karkat, please, Karkat, I'm trying to save you—”

Karkat _growls_ , like nothing John's ever heard before, and rakes his claws over John's back and shoulders, pushing him away with his other hand, leaving deep punctures on that side, too, blood staining both of them, all over everything, and as John stumbles back over to Dave, he has to cover another relieved smile because Karkat's covered in his blood, mixing perfectly with his own, hiding that it was ever there.

“Fuck,” Dave say, rough-voiced, fervent enough that it has to be his relief he's putting into the words, the adrenaline. They couldn't leave Karkat to die, culled because of who he is, what he is, but at the same time they really don't want to end up on the run because they have powers they shouldn't have and they used them to protect a mutant troll.

They'd _do_ it, but John likes living at home, can't imagine leaving his dad again, loves having Dave and Rose and Jade close-by, loves having all the other trolls around.

Then Dave's face changes like he's acting, and John shakes his head, leaving drops of his blood in the dirt. “ _Fuck you_ , you idiot, John—you ran into a fucking troll! I'm not waiting around to get eaten—”

John hides an entirely inappropriate laugh at the idea of Karkat eating anyone, let along them, and stumbles after Dave with one last backwards look at Karkat. The adult trolls are too close, but they look bored and they're turning away. One smiles, approving, as Karkat makes it to his feet, that dangerous growl still echoing through his chest, teeth bared in a snarl, and starts after John and Dave.

They run back to Dave's apartment, only two blocks away. Which is good, because Dave looks almost spooked, and John is covered in blood, and with a troll—with Karkat—chasing them, it's only a matter of time before someone calls the cops. John is so, _so_ glad that this isn't his neighborhood, because his neighbors have been looking for a reason to have all the trolls arrested. They don't like them coming over. He does not live at all close to the troll side of town, or even a neutral area, like some of the run-down parts of the city center.

Karkat catches up at the door, and somehow he ends up sandwiched between John and Dave. When he tries to pull away, like he really doesn't want to be there, or thinks he _shouldn't_ be there, John bites at his own lip. He can't taste blood, or at least not new blood. Everything tastes coppery already. It's kind of gross, kind of nauseating, or maybe that's how it feels now that things are going wrong again.

Karkat complains _all the time_ when John touches him, but John knows he really likes it, at least a little. But not this time. (Has it changed? Karkat's not supposed to pull away, not after everything—)

The rest of him is dizzy, it's relief, because they're all still alive, and not on the run—although that could be awesome, they could be rugged and—

John grips Karkat's wrist like he's going to dissolve if he lets go. That gets them all up the stairs. Dave slams the door behind them, more forcefully than he needs to. Karkat pulls away from John, goes to sit on the couch.

“You're not getting blood all over my furniture,” Dave tells him, nothing to show that something's wrong except his fist is still kind of bloody, a smear of John's blood on his cheek, and his voice a little unsteady. John slumps against the wall. His nose throbs dully, but Dave checked his punch, and nothing's broken, he thinks.

So Karkat stands in the middle of the floor, shoulders tense under his black shirt—the black shirt spotted with John's blood—and buries his head in his hands. John pulls himself to his feet, walks across the floor.

“Karkat?” he whispers, very quiet.

“Shit,” Dave says, almost conversational. John ignores him.

Very slowly, very carefully, Karkat turns to look at him, shuddering at all the bright-red blood, starting to dry dark but not any more natural. John thinks he understands, and relaxes, just a little.

“Sorry I got blood all over you,” he says, not at all guilty for that, but also sort of angry, at the shitty troll hemocaste and the way that they couldn't make a world good enough to not have it. He has borne the weight of the world on his shoulders, and they kind of fucked up there. He should have known that Karkat wouldn't like a reminder of his human-colored blood smeared all over everything! “The hemocaste is so _fucked up_ , I can't believe...”

John goes to hug Karkat, _really hard_. Karkat can deal with it. He needs it right now. Or John needs it, and Karkat's going to have to deal. “I'm so sorry, Karkat, I didn't even think about your blood and what if they'd seen it and then we'd have had to go on the run and live a life as hardened, bitter men with hearts of gold reduced by the world's circumstances—”

“You suck at titling things,” Karkat says into his shoulder, voice oddly mechanical, intonation all wrong. Like his voice is breaking. “John...”

“Karkat?”

“Dave,” Dave mutters to himself, in the corner, arms crossed. Karkat doesn't like him very much, certainly wouldn't tolerate a hug from him—humans are still fundamentally better at the friendship-disease then trolls are, with their weak human immune systems. Or some shit like that. Dave is okay with that; he can hold his cool around them—

“Why didn't you fucking run?” Karkat says, and Dave frowns. John's hands tighten in Karkat's shirt, pulling it tight, pulling Karkat even closer against John. He looks like he's clinging to the hug too, for once.

“We did,” John points out, which is either John not getting the problem or John ignoring the problem—either way, John is an emotional wrecking ball. “We couldn't just leave you!”

“Fuck,” Karkat says, gasping out the words, and his shoulders are shaking now. Dave realizes that Karkat's crying, and turns half-away. This isn't anything but awkward. If it were under different circumstances it would be _glorious_ , but it's just—wrong, to laugh here, at least at Karkat, and it's kind of unnerving that he feels that way, he's got no good reason to, it's just an asshole thing to do right now, okay?

John murmurs something soothing and pats Karkat's back carefully. He is probably thinking of a shitty movie, or his dad. He shoots Dave a look, but he's not getting any emotional support from that quarter. Striders don't do that shit. (Okay, yes, they do. But Karkat doesn't really like Dave. Terezi keeps on teasing him about blooming caliginous feelings, but it's not like that, either.) If this wasn't his apartment, if John wasn't still dripping blood slowly from his nose, Dave would just abscond the fuck out of here. But he can't, really; things are more complicated than that. Complicated like I-might-have-broken-my-best-friend's-nose, like he asked me to.

But Dave stays and he still winces when Karkat's arms shoot out to grip John with near-desperation, fast enough to make John gasp in surprise. And over John's shoulder, Dave can see Karkat's face go desolate, full of a sort of self-loathing that, yeah, Dave can understand. It's thick in the back of Dave's throat, like blood. And when Karkat's arms go loose, not limp but holding John like he's an egg, the blood turns thick, like tears held back too long. Clotting in his mouth, because he feels _guilty_. It would have been so easy to avoid the big trolls, it's not too late—never too late, that's what he's learned—he can go back, keep this fucking mess from ever happening in the first place—

“I'm so fucking terrible,” Karkat whispers, voice hoarse and rough, into John's shoulder, and Dave's hands ache suddenly, a deep hurt down past the tendon, through the muscle, nestled between the fine, fragile bones. His right fingers twitch, just once, before he curls both hands into fists. “Fuck, John, I _am_ the worst. You got punched—made yourself get punched—because of me. Why didn't you run? You nookwhiffer, you ludicrous asshole, it would've turned out okay.” Karkat almost visibly makes himself stop talking, chokes back a sob, which is as growled and reverberating and harsh as any crying troll—Dave has made notes on some of his many observances—but his face is dry, his eyes are fucking _dry_ , because trolls cry their blood color, and Karkat's blood is forbidden, as unnatural as Dave's red, red eyes—

Something in him snaps. Dave flashsteps over to them, checks himself a foot away, carefully in Karkat's view, hands up and face—his face... He doesn't _know_ what his expression is, but it's enough to keep Karkat calm as he slides around to the other side, to Karkat's back, so he can wrap his arms around John and around Karkat and hug the _fuck_ out of them, Karkat's feelings be damned—Dave can't help it if Karkat doesn't like him, he's just a smug asshole, it's who he _is_...

“Dave,” Karkat rasps, and Dave lets go like he said he wouldn't, immediately stepping back. “No, you bulge-headed _idiot_ , Dave, Dave, _I'm sorry_.” Karkat buries his face in John's shoulder—John's trying to turn his head a hundred and eighty degrees so he can look at Dave, head craning over his shoulder, it's not working—and Dave snaps forward so fast he hits his cheek on the bump of Karkat's horn. He's pretty sure that sucker's gonna bruise, but he's felt worse—felt death slide through him over and over—and _fuck_.

“Don't apologize,” Dave snaps out, the words forced between teeth that want to grit themselves in protest of _everything_. Every fucking thing. “You didn't do anything to create this shitty situation.”

Karkat laughs, sobs. Something. “You couldn't see your face when John asked you to punch him. Strider, you're insufferable but you care about _this_ asshole, prankster's gambit and all, and I saw your face, _Dave_ , you hated hitting him and you knew to just get the hell out of there, why didn't you _do_ it? Too sensible for your perverse inane irony? I—”

“I wasn't going to leave you to die. Again.” Dave feels sick, and he has more memories he never lived through than any of the rest of them. They swim in the back of his head, mostly quiescent, but they flicker through his dreams, most nights, a thousand worlds and a thousand Daves and they all died, and only one—only him—got to come back. Sometimes things went terribly wrong—more wrong than they ever did in the timeline that ended up winning, the timeline where they finally broke the game until winning was actually worth having.

John says nothing, but one arm unwraps itself from around Karkat and pulls Dave even closer, holds on like he's never going to let go again. Karkat looks surprised, and Dave can't figure out if it's horror, disgust, or something—better. So he pulls himself closer until he can't see either of their faces. Until they can't see his.

“You're still bleeding,” Dave tells John eventually, because the silence is itching at the back of his neck. Then he immediately regrets saying anything, when Karkat makes a noise like a broken lawnmower. Maybe lawnmowers just sound like anguished teenage aliens—are they still aliens? They all live on Earth now—who are holding onto John just tight enough that he doesn't bleed. So, so carefully. 

“That's my fucking fault,” Karkat says, voice a lot less clear than it usually is. It _vibrates_ with emotion.

“I punched him,” Dave says. “Don't take all the credit, Vantas.”

“I told him to,” John insists, never trying to escape what he sees as his responsibility, and he uses one hand—temporarily unpeeled from where John's plastered himself against Karkat—to pull Karkat's arms a little tighter against him, first one and then the other. The blood on his face is mostly dried, except for where the steady drip still coming from the almost-clotted nostril has kept his upper lip wet and tacky. It's starting to flake off his cheeks. There's already some swelling.

“We're there for you no matter how stupid you are,” Dave finally concludes. His tone is almost cheery. John giggles, and Karkat shifts, and Dave waits a few seconds before he checks Karkat's expression. Still as distraught as a grounded preteen missing the homecoming dance, but he's trying to look grumpy again. Grumpy is making an effort, but losing ground to happiness that's like dawn before the sun crosses the horizon. There are birds singing and shit like that and _everything_. Dave doesn't feel quite so queasy. The party in his stomach has settled down.

“We're not supposed to bleed anymore,” Karkat tells John's shoulder, and Dave has to bite his lip, because Karkat sounds so _hurt_ , like the world has personally betrayed him. It's done enough of that already.

“Go clean yourself up,” Dave tells John, and John's mouth thins out and he strokes his hands over Karkat's arms, his shirt still a little tacky with stray drips of blood. Dave helps John maneuver Karkat until he's wrapped around Dave instead. Karkat starts trembling. Dave clenches his hands into fists against the fabric of Karkat's shirt, because it's the only thing he can do, because maybe it will ease the ache inside his palms, the helpless hurting itch. Because the fact that it's Dave here is only going to make everything worse. Karkat's not even supposed to _tolerate_ him.

“Sorry,” Karkat says again, like the words cost him. Probably because he's speaking to Dave. “Fuck you, but I'm _sorry_.”

“I'm sorry for your hideous fucking homicidal excuse of a society,” Dave says, and means it, even if he sounds like he doesn't. He bites his tongue.

“I'm still blaming that on Eridan,” Karkat laughs, bitter. They do have to take the blame for what they live with, what got kept and what got thrown away and what's still so terribly, terribly fucked up. “And Equius. Fuck, Dave, John wasn't supposed to get involved—”

“He's your friend,” Dave says, and even he can't pretend that his voice is anything other than awkward. Awkward like the group discussion on troll-human sexual compatibility. _That_ had been a fucking terrible idea. “He'll involve himself no matter _what_ , okay, Karkat? He wants to. _I_ want to. You don't like me, I like to make you incoherent with rage—it's a change of pace from the frothy capslock thing you revel in—but your fucking culture screwed you over even worse than my own did. Red, right? It's a bitch. Not that my eyes aren't rad as hell, but not everyone gets how awesome they are. That's not the point. The point is that if _you_ feel bad about letting John swoop in to your rescue, you will make _John_ feel bad for doing it. That's not why you should accept that we've got your back if you want it or especially if you don't, but if it works, then go for it, cupcake.”

“You don't hate me,” Karkat tells Dave, like it's a revelation.

“What the fuck?”

“I know humans don't _get_ normal hate. I thought it was your twisted, nonsexual, no-respect hate, but—”

“You're just too much fun to piss off,” Dave says, clears his throat, tries again. “You've—been screwed over as much as any of us. Sometimes more, sometimes less. You don't like me, John doesn't like it when I antagonize you too much—”

“I guess that means we're friends, nookplunger,” Karkat announces, voice oddly raw, and hugs Dave like it's _Dave_ , not just a rock to cling to in a storm.

“We always were, idiot,” Dave says, and hugs him back. Striders don't hug, but Striders don't follow the rules.

“You two are adorable!” John announces, sounding stable again, and Dave winces, which makes Karkat grate out a laugh. Damn it, Vantas wins this round. Although, really, they are all losing. Losing is the only option. There is nothing else to do, now, now that they've found themselves adrift in a place where everything they went through, every last nail-biting soul-shattering piss-yourself-terrifying us-against-the-universe moment—all of that never happened, here and now. There used to be no 'now' because time itself was broken, only Dave there to measure out the ghost of it. And they are all so fragile, Rose says, but she only says it to Dave, late at night, only by chat, lines of violet text, grammar and phrasing mechanically correct because Rose can control that much, at least. She told him that, too. Gods, crumbling under the weight of responsibility and normality and every fucking thing that the universe has stacked against them. Kids, who fucked up too much and accomplished too much, who didn't lay down and die when they had the chance.

“But seriously, Dave, we're going to sit on your couch. It's stupid to just stand in the middle of the room like this.”

Karkat winces.

“You're an asshole, Egbert.”

“Daaaave! C'mon, let's move you guys—” And Dave flushes, just faintly, as he shuffles—with Karkat, they don't quite detach from each other—to the couch. Karkat seems to be fully zombified, breath still coming a little too shallow, a little too fast. John dabs at his own blood with a wet cloth he's brought with him, his hair dripping water and eyelashes wet, washing off Karkat. It's exactly like a scene in the worst sort of movie. The only way it could potentially be worse is if they were all in period dress and badly faking English accents.

“Sorry, John,” Karkat says, one last time.

“I'm sorry, Karkat,” John tells him, right back, very sober for once.

“I'm sorry I have to deal with you two bastards,” Dave says, and Karkat grumbles almost like everything's normal.

-End-


	3. Phosphorescence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jade and Gamzee have a conversation, and go to a beach, of sorts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for a few slurs (misogynistic/homophobic) and the threat of sexual violence. Also, obscenities, but that's kind of a given.

Jade ends up early for the group meet-up: it's far, on the troll side of town, but she walks slowly instead of pulling space tight around her until it's just a step away. She goes step-by-step, because the day's nice, the sun just starting to set, everything still warm and the sky turning delicate purple-blue and tangerine orange and the clouds are a coral pink so bright that it almost makes her skip, even after it's started to fade shell-pink, the purple encroaching on it, and even after the big, industrial buildings have hidden most of it from view. Downtown is too loud and too smelly—exhaust, piss, trash, restaurant smells, new food on top of rot, perfume and cologne and scented deodorant on everyone passing by—and she jumps and flinches when cars go by too fast, a little wild-eyed, but it's all worth it. Because they're going to go get grubsnacks—which are oddly reminiscent, although Jade can't figure out why, and she doesn't _think_ she's got any transplanted memories of something like that, even if John's dad remembers that she likes them.

But whatever. They're going to get snacks, and watch movies at Rose's house, although she thinks that Karkat's getting to the point where he might invite them over to his hive, even if trolls don't do that and even though he says he doesn't really like them. They break all sorts of rules, these days. Although there are some little loopholes in place. Nobody—except for Rose, who's thoughtful, and Aradia, who thought it was neat, and Eridan, who'd been concerned and condescending and she thinks a little creeped out!--but other than them, nobody has noticed, or at least said anything, that even though she has her Grandpa again, she also still has stuffed-Grandpa posed by the fireplace. Nobody says anything, even though he has his friends over all the time, every Thursday night for bridge and old-man gossip and stories of past—and current—adventures. Once one of her tutors hung a hat on him, and didn't even seem to notice. She's not sure if they can't _see_ the stuffed body, or if they just don't register it.

Maybe there's nothing special about it at all. Sometimes it feels like lots of people are kind of stupid.

But Jade doesn't know how long it takes to walk from one side of town to the other. So she's at their meeting-spot almost an hour early, partly because she walks faster, the muscles in her shoulder tense, when there are cars rushing past, waterfall-loud and just as dangerous but a lot more unpredictable. She has a lot of instincts telling her to bite them (and chase them, they're bad-bad-wrong! in her mind still) and to crush them into a dense pinpoint of space that can't do anything and to run away. So she walks faster, not stopping to look in the windows of the stores or watch the other people walking by. So she's early. And she doesn't really know things like the distance from her house to the high school, or the park, or even from her house to Rose's house, or John's house to Dave's apartment. She got the fewest memories. John got the most, but Rose is careful about pretending she knows all the little details she never inherited when the world reconstituted, and she manages it with careful practice and force of will. Dave is cagey about how much he remembers. A lot of the new things that Jade knows are jus normal human stuff that she never learned in the old universe—like how to go through a checkout line at a store, like how to cook food on a stove-top. Maybe that's why she knows less about their new world than the others.

The park's mostly empty, all the kids home now—probably partially because it's getting dark, and there are all these unspoken rules now! About when some places are safe for humans, or where trolls can go without the police trailing them. Rules that make nannies and stay-at-home parents clear out of a park on the edge of the troll side of town long before the sun starts setting—even though lots of trolls walk around in the daylight, now, just like humans walk around at night. Places low-blooded trolls shouldn't go, day or night, because they won't necessarily come back and Tavros had almost cried, one day, when Feferi tried to drag him down the most direct route to Rose's house.

Jade sits on a picnic bench, back pressed against the weathered slab of wood, and kicks off her shoes, trailing her toes through rounded, sun-warm gravel.

Across the park, a bunch of guys have shown up. She looks up when they bang against the chainlink fence, rattling it, laughing. Older than her, but she doesn't know how much, she's still bad at guessing peoples' ages. Jade just doesn't have the knack, she guesses. But the way their eyes light up when they see a teenage girl with long, bare legs—even if they're unshaved and hairy—and no one there with her is enough to set her hackles on edge. She can't growl anymore, but that doesn't make the instinct go away. She can't help but bare her teeth, even if it looks like a smile with canines that are mostly human. They see it that way, she can tell. They smirk back, saunter towards her.

“Looks like the bitch is friendly,” one of them starts. Another snickers. Adrenaline hits Jade like a wave, narrowing her concentration down—like Sburb, only it's still better, it's just some stupid boys. No monsters. No game. Still, she's no longer thinking of the sunshine on her hair and her ears—the ears nobody else notices, except the ones who matter, her _friends_ —and the smell of algae-choked pond water and the little ducklings that live on it (delicious, but she's not supposed to think of them that way anymore! It freaks John out and then he teases her about it) and the slight scent of decomposition where a pigeon died on the top of the play structure and the wood against the knobs of her spine that's leaving the smell of spilled barbecue sauce and, faintly, chicken on her shirt.

“Think she's a fag, or just a hippie?” another says, pointing openly at her legs. Jade crosses them, and pulls her handgun out of her purse. It's boring, really, but it's still pretty good! She picked out something nice to keep with her during the day, when she can't really carry a rifle.

“Go away!” she says, eyebrows knotting together, all expressive frustration and the potential for seething anger that they probably don't take seriously enough. She's a wiry teenage girl, and they don't _know_ what she did to earn her lean muscle..

“Fuck!” someone snaps, and they scatter. Jade lets herself relax, and she's kind of glad that nobody else is here yet!

...Except Gamzee, because he's standing underneath the trees on the other side of the playground, just barely visible. He's getting taller, suddenly it seems, his horns starting to look a little outsized as they grow faster than he does, clacking up against a branch of a tree, and Jade smiles and bounces up onto the picnic bench to wave at him, enthusiastically, with both hands.

“Crazy bitch,” someone says behind her, just loud enough that her ears can catch it—from what they probably think is a safe distance. They finally scatter when Gamzee starts towards, his gait slow and hitching, a kind of ambling walk that is—oh. Is he hesitating, kind of?”

“Hi Gamzee! I guess you're early too, huh?”

“Yeah,” he mutters, voice focused and quiet in a way that sends danger-warning shivers down Jade's spine, too familiar and now Jade knows some bad things about indigo-blooded trolls. It's _stupid_ , she tells herself, she knows Gamzee! He pulled through in the end. ...They hadn't really talked on Pesterchum, but once he'd asked Rose where he could find a scarf for Karkat in “nice fucking gray, because my best pale bro don't want his sacrilegious blood shoved all up in people's motherfucking business.” Rose had knitted a scarf in a muted charcoal, then put in a box under her bed and messaged Gamzee to say that the yarn store in town had some nice hand-knitted things for sale.

Jade hadn't really understood that.

But it's hard to keep focused with Gamzee looming like a threat, his head heavy with horns—his body still catching up with him—and everything about him should be comedic, silly and friendly, but it isn't. His face was still painted, solid slate gray almost the same color as his skin, just a shade darker, a thin pale line along his lips. His face is blank.

“You don't usually come,” Jade says, smiling, and she scoots over and pats the bench next to her butt. She takes the opportunity to shake all the bad thoughts out of her head, hard, until her hair's even wilder, a black cloud around her, and her ears flop around with the movement. When she looks back up, Gamzee's smiling at her, a little too wide, still that edge of danger, but it's a smile, and she laughs and slumps back. He hops up, sitting on the benchtop, long legs sprawled down past her. Jade turns her head to smile at his knees.

“Sure,” he says, a little hesitant. Like he'll agree with almost anything she'll say, Jade thinks, a moment of inspiration she examines critically as soon as it hits. Because she's not _good_ with people, not like Rose who sees through things and understands how and why conversations and reactions and emotions work, not like John who just gets it, even if sometimes he ignores it and even if he still got bullied sometimes. Jade turns her attention to her fingers, knots her thumbs together and tugs, pulling against herself.

Jade is smart. She's intelligent, and she's smart; Rose likes to differentiate the two, something to do with Dave being a genius and making terrible decisions, John being sharp as a tack underneath several layers of cushioning idiocy, and sharp as a hammer when it comes to other people. Jade can do the math: she hasn't seen Gamzee since that first night—the very first night—at John's house, with macaroni-and-cheese and a hysterical edge to their laughter and conversation as Karkat elbowed his way through the thickest knots of people, an excuse for contact, and John made disappointed faces at Vriska when she was the only one who wouldn't ignore Sollux choking on silent sobs in a corner, until John's Dad had gone to give him a glass of water and a handkerchief. Sollux had dropped the glass, the third broken dish that evening, which had made him hide his face in his hands and mutter self-abuse, but John's Dad was _great_. Even Equius had calmed down, although he'd still been horrified when he broke a picture frame. ...He looked so much _younger_ when he cried.

Gamzee had been there. That had been the last time she'd seen him. He'd watched Tavros cry, because most of them had cried at some point, he hadn't looked away from him, intense but not making any move to help him, because—

Because Tavros had flinched away from him.

They all had.

With very good reason, but only Karkat had the personality and the interest and the force of will to treat Gamzee like everything was normal. Or at least like it ever could be normal. And he hadn't spent any time with them. And he was an indigo-blood, even humans knew about the madness that dogged purple-blue on the hemospectrum. Terezi had told her about legislature (none that had made it past the very beginnings, but it had been attempted multiple times) to ban the highest castes of land-dwellers from human habitation. Indigo psychosis, they called it, and Jade knew it was _real._ She'd saved the world with Gamzee. And it's his legs next to hers, and when she looks up, his still-skinny shoulders are tense and his eyes sharp, predatory, watching. Like she's dangerous, the dog-part of her that was alpha (not leader, exactly, but nobody was pushing her around!) insists. But Jade ignores it. She doesn't pee on Kanaya's rosebushes, either. And it's not because Kanaya's scary!

“Do you ever want to kill people?” she asks, chipper in the fading daylight, because she can't sound too serious. It is a stupid thing to say. If he does try to kill her—well, he's a highblood troll, she's a frail human girl, but she's Witch of Space, and no Bard's going to be any threat in a head-on fight. And she's trusted him with the new world, and he's stayed away from all of them, there have never been any fights, and she can trust him not to bring about her death. Not plan for it, at least, but part of her bristles at the thought of him going for her in a momentary rage, or cold slivers of his brain splintering off and the many, many ways he could find to hurt her—

Adrenaline in her throat. He's silent, claws digging deep scratches into the wood. “Gamzee?”

“Of fucking course,” he hisses. “I think about all that miracle red in your veins— _all the rainbow of trolls who won't show me enough motherfucking respect_ —”

But he sounds sick. Underneath the bloodlust, Jade thinks.

“What about us?” she asks.

“You all know it. 'Course I do. I can't help it.” And her throat goes tight when his voice wavers as he answers.

“But _are_ you?” she asks, all business-like even though she's tripping around the next sentence, avoiding it: “Are you going to kill us?” Rose is normally about practicality, but that's because Rose cares more about details. Jade will also do what's necessary. But she can't make herself _say_ it because it does hurt.

Silence.

“That's fine then! ...Anyway, I'm glad you came this time. I don't have to wait all alone!”

More silence. He's drawn in on himself, as much as he can—all long bones, soon he'll be huge, Jade thinks, just a hint of regret because puberty seems _silly_ after everything else.

“It's not,” Gamzee tells her, very seriously, voice rough.

Jade thinks, then frowns, ears flicking in confusion. She looks up at him. Nudges one bony knee with her elbow.

“It's not fine. I shouldn't fucking—”

“We miss you!”

Gamzee _growls_ at her. Jade fights the urge to tuck her tail between her legs, and turns around to sit with her legs under the picnic table, leaning back to look Gamzee sort-of in the eyes. The sunset's gone, the sky indescribably purple. She can see Venus, just barely, almost faded by the almost-full pink moon rising below it. “...I think you should still come. To the group activities. Karkat wishes you were there!” And then she feels terrible for saying that, because Gamzee actually flinches. “It's just us, you know. Just us who get it. And Dave killed almost all of us at least once! And sometimes I think about ripping out throats. Sometimes people smell really really _delicious_. And I think Vriska killed two trolls that tried to break into her hive. And Nepeta blinded someone.”

“I shouldn't—one day my best bro won't be there, woof-girl. And if the Messiahs start calling my name, just in my head because—”

He pauses for a breath, deep and shuddery. He almost hisses it out, a barely-there version of the noise that Equius makes when he punches through her door again. Just because she won't let him make her a huge heavy steel door!

“I shouldn't. Motherfucking. Be here. With your fragile little bodies and your green, green eyes I could pull out and—hold while I paint the walls with the news of the oncoming _carnival_ , the night that won't ever be motherfucking ending, one long last miracle that stains every wall—”

“I could kill you,” Jade points out. “I don't think you'd live very long if all your bones were ten times bigger than they are right now. You'd probably sort of—spill out of your skin. I could find out for certain! How long it takes. You can't kill me, Gamzee, I won't _let_ you.”

“...Okay,” Gamzee says, eying her. It looks different, this time, and guiltily, Jade tries to figure if she'd just made a caliginous come-on. Because she doesn't want to pail Gamzee! And she's not looking for any sort of black relationship. ...It'd make it harder to send Karkat into conniptions by “accidentally” flirting with him, kismesistically.

“Let's go up to the reservoir,” Jade says suddenly, jumping down, toes curling into the gravel. “We've still got time before the others get here!”

He looks at her. “Isn't it—”

“Yes or no?” Jade insists, impatient, and when he nods, it's less than breath to pull them there. It's almost relaxing, to let the boundaries of self go blurry and show up somewhere new.

They're on an old tree stump, and Jade sits down, still close to Gamzee. He doesn't move away before he sits down, too.

“Okay, my bark-beast sis, that is pretty motherfucking fast.” Miracles, Jade thinks he's going to say, but he doesn't, just looks down, face cloudy again. Or maybe it's just the paint.

“I miss the ocean,” Jade says, wiggling her bare toes—whoops, forgot her shoes! But she can still feel the shape of them, she can feel the shape of almost _anything_ if she tries hard enough, so with another thought they're resting behind her—against the bark, like she'll be able to reach the water below if she just stretches them out. The air smells wet, but it's still wrong-wrong-wrong. She jumps out to the ocean sometimes—Florida, Peru, Singapore, a step away—but that's still not quite right. She misses waking up to the smell of salt.

“But that ocean shit, it's _dangerous_ ,” Gamzee hisses, unexpectedly. “Dark dangerous miracles with teeth to eat up little fucking wigglers, that motherfucking WON'T STAY AWAY—”

“But I feel so heavy in fresh water,” Jade points out, barely-relevant—she knows—but it holds weight in her head and in her mouth as she says it, like something slotting into place. The backwards truth of particle physics feels the same. She presses her hand into the rough bark underneath them, hard, and when she holds them up to look, the pattern is stamped into her flesh, raises ridges and flecks of moss and wood and a little raised pink dot where there had been a hole left by some bark-boring something.

“—and there's nothing to do, damn, fucking nothing, but sit and wait because you're too motherfucking stupid to do much else, and ain't no one there to tell you shit—”

“And I couldn't see anyone else,” Jade says, flung back to days of looking at nothing, nothing, nothing. No seagulls, too far from land. Albatrosses, a baker's dozen of times. Whales, seals, no other mammals, not even any rats on the island except when Bec made some appear for hunting. Little crabs in the shallows, paddle-footed worms in the sand. Silence, and no noises except noise that meant nothing. Watching for ships that never landed, and imagining she was moving to the mainland, where there would be people, so—so she could eat food like she remembered. Someone to hold her when the storms hit and she could imagine waves coming to pull them all down into the sea. Someone who would dance with her, because the shearwaters she remembered—once, there had been a boat, and they'd danced along behind it, little birds with long wings and feet that dangled down, pattering against the water, enough to make her laugh—the shearwaters were too far out from shore to see. She found them washed up, once in a blue moon, and she'd cut them open to the belly, to see what they'd eaten. They left her hands stinking.

“But I miss the smell of salt,” Jade says. “Seaweed rotting on the beach. Fishbones trapped in it.” She thinks she has Bec's memories, there, or maybe it's every dog's ambrosia, the dead things and the living and the in-between tangled up and strange with salt and melting into complex tangles of information in the sun.

“Salt,” Gamzee says distantly, licking his lips like he can still taste it. “Miracle stars in the water.”

“Phosphorescence,” Jade says, and shivers with memory. She pushes herself down the log, lets herself fall—space, all the empty space, until it's hard to believe that she really does splash down, that there's enough substance to her—all the spaces between her particles, space is nothing and everything is mostly nothing—to displace the water. It leaves drops on her legs, felt more than seen. The light is going. She can feel cool night air drawing in, where her skirt gets wet and clings to her legs.

She half-expects the muddy freshwater to glow green-blue, as much a miracle as anything is, but it doesn't. It just smells like fine silt, the beginning stink of anaerobic decomposition, the single-celled algae living off fertilizer run-off and the summer sun.

Gamzee splashes down next to her, more felt than seen, and she half-shrieks (half-laughs) as she raises hands, uselessly—if she wanted, the water would never hit her, she could redirect it to hit someone else, like she'd done with John and the water-balloon fight, just send it back into the reservoir, send it up into the clouds—but instead she raised her arms to ward off the droplets.

“Sorry,” Gamzee says, not meaning it, and she splashes him lightly with a toe, then catches herself against his arm when a rock slips under her foot. He catches her, a little too rough, claws picking a hole in her shirt. Jade doesn't care. She takes a few splashing steps deeper, and shakes like a dog. It only tosses her mass of hair around. She doesn't care, feeling feral. It smells like night-time, like cooling air, and she wants to run wild and bite. Instead, she smells the raccoon on shore, clever little paws in the muck, and she takes off, barking, stupid human noises because she's got a human throat, but it's a chase.

Gamzee shadows her, just as fast and probably faster if he wanted to be (if she doesn't use her powers, because she can put him wherever she wants, could set him down a fraction of an inch from her own skin, fifty feet further down the beach, into the depths of the abyssal sea or up in the ozone layer or in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, underground, deep enough that the rock starts to go soft around the edges with heat, like summer butter) but that's fine. He smiles at her like it's a surprise when she turns, panting, to smile at him, trying to make it a dog-smile, half in the ears with her tongue exposed.

“You taking after Terezi?” he says, a little too hesitant, and Jade laughs a little too heartily. His face is indistinct under the face paint, even with her enhanced eyes—better at tracking movement, worse at color—because darkness is gathering around them, the light fading away, the sun long set and the protracted summer sunset slipping away. There are stars up above them.

“Terezi is a _dragon_ , not a dog! Dogs are _better!_ ”

“Haha, sure! Whatever you say, human sister.”

“Dog! _Dog_ , Gamzee, bark-bark!” And she strains her voice low to imitate a growl.

“Dog-human, then, motherfucking miracle ears you got. Fucking tail, all that stuff. Bark,” he says back, trying to imitate her voice, and Jade stumbles in the water, laughing, tail thumping back and forth. She'll have to brush it out tonight! And Gamzee growls back at her, too, but trolls can do it right, or almost-right, a low clicking growl like a beetle-dog, something insect to the harmonics, and it makes her jump.

Gamzee flinches away, and Jade's eyes narrow. It's dark, but she's not mistaken. She _saw_ that.

“Gamzee?” she asks, looking around them, ears pointed high and flicking around. Listening. Did something startle him? He hasn't pulled a weapon, still looks sleepy-silly, not angry—

“Sorry, sis, didn't mean to—to fucking startle you or nothing. Shit.”

“What?” she says, looking at him, and when she takes a step closer he takes a long step back, knee-deep in water and it's soaking up his pants, dark and heavy, pulling them even lower down his hips. “Gamzee, don't be silly! You didn't startle me. You can't scare me,” she adds, half a dare.

“Oh yeah?” he says, stepping closer, and he looms over her, muscle to go along with the height. Up close, she can hear the buzz of his growl echoing through his chest, so low it's barely there. “That's pretty motherfucking stupid, chica. Because you're such a little, fucking _breakable_ thing—”

“Don't,” Jade says, voice wobbling a little. But it's a warning, and his eyes go wide, suddenly, so maybe he's _listening_. “You growl, okay? And I'm being _stupid_. And it's all stupid. I probably should be afraid of you and I am but _I'm not going to let myself be_. So don't you be stupid either, Gamzee Makara!”

“I got it,” Gamzee tells her, eyes wide, hunching his shoulders, like a dog wanting to roll on his belly, sad and ashamed. And Jade doesn't want him looking like that, either.

“It's fine,” she tells him, patting his side, just above his bony hip. She can't reach his shoulder without moving too close. She thinks, but personal space is still so _hard_ to figure out! It's so frustrating, so _fucking_ difficult, some days. And that's with humans! And trolls are weird, like John always says. But she can't think about that now, it's like chasing her tail, but less fun. “We'll work on it,” she adds, earnestly.

“That's probably a crazy-bad idea,” he tells her, but all saturated with relief, so thick she can smell it—even though troll pheremones mostly make no sense at all!—because, maybe—Jade thinks, at least—he wants her to try anyway.

There are lightning bugs on the grass of the shore, little green-glow pinpricks of light, and it's not at all like phosphorescent plankton in the water, Jade thinks, but she can _chase_ them!

Before she can run off, Jade's phone buzzes, and she jumps. Gamzee does too, a flash of white—a club—like a pale ghost in the moonlight, before it's gone again. “Oh! We're late—I bet everyone's wondering where we are!”

“Maybe you could drop me off down by my hive,” Gamzee suggests, very carefully. “I don't want to be any kind of bother, yeah, but—”

Head cocked to the side, Jade looks a question at him.

“I don't go because nobody got to put up with my shit,” he says, looking at one of his hands: rough orange claws, a purple scratch on the knuckle, rough skin and rougher callouses. Jade decides to paint his nails one day. Maybe Karkat-red.

“Yeah we do!” she says, tugging on his hand, which at least makes him look at her. “C'mon, you were going anyway!”

“Nah,” he says. “I was just watching. Got to look out for all my motherfucking friends, right?”

Something clenches very hard in Jade's heart. And she wants to smile at the word “friends,” despite how—

“Gamzee,” Jade says, very seriously. “That's really, really creepy!”

He laughs like a saw caught in a blender, jagged and wavery edges, but it's easy to sprawl against him—definitely too bony, Jade thinks—and laugh with him, until they're both laughing just because, a hysterical note in his voice and her hair tickling his arm and Jade holding herself against the ache of too much laughter.

When she's faded to giggles and Gamzee's holding himself too still, she stands up straight, and nods. “Okay,” she says. “We can chase fireflies instead.”

“What?” he asks, reflexively.

“Miracle bugs!” she says, and splashes up on shore, listening. He follows.

-End-


End file.
